Birdsong gives clue to speech

A study in which scientists taught baby sparrows to sing could shed new light on the basis of human language and help in the treatment of speech difficulties, scientists report today.

The work, which showed how baby sparrows could construct a whole song after only hearing snippets of a tune, could also show how the saxophonist Charlie ''Bird'' Parker and other jazz musicians blend melodies to form a composition. The birds seemed to be able to "get" the song by recognising the way fragments fit together, rather than remembering the entire melody. In a similar way, musicians use rules to stitch together movements into a work, according to Prof Gary Rose of the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.

Birds master singing in stages, from a subsong phase - avian babbling - to fixing the melody, which in some ways mimics the way human babies learn to speak.

The findings were reported today in the journal Nature by Prof Rose and Dr Stephanie Plamondon, a neuroscience doctoral student. She said: "A full song or a complete sentence isn't required to learn the song, only an association between phrases of the song."